Shortly after she entered service, Minnesota joined the Great White Fleet for its circumnavigation of the globe in 1908–1909.

In 1916, the ship was placed in reserve, though she quickly returned to service when the United States entered World War I in April 1917.

She helped to return American soldiers from Europe in 1919 before resuming her training ship duties in 1920–1921, before being decommissioned in December 1921 and broken up for scrap at the Philadelphia Navy Yard in 1924.

The Connecticut class followed the Virginia-class battleships, but corrected some of the most significant deficiencies in the earlier design, most notably the superposed arrangement of the main and some of the secondary guns.

Despite the improvements, the ships were rendered obsolescent by the revolutionary British battleship HMS Dreadnought, completed before most of the members of the Connecticut class.

As was standard for capital ships of the period, Minnesota carried four 21 inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes, submerged in her hull on the broadside.

The press in both countries began to call for war, and Roosevelt hoped to use the demonstration of naval might to deter Japanese aggression.

[6] The fleet then turned north for the Philippines, stopping in Manila, before continuing on to Japan where a welcoming ceremony was held in Yokohama.

The ships then crossed the Atlantic to return to Hampton Roads on 22 February 1909, having traveled 46,729 nautical miles (86,542 km; 53,775 mi).

She spent the following three years on the eastern coast of the United States conducting a peacetime routine of training cruises, apart from one voyage to the English Channel in 1910.

For the first six months of 1912, she patrolled Cuban waters; she went to the US base at Guantanmo Bay to support the suppression of an insurrection on the island from 7 to 22 June.

In 1915, Minnesota returned to the United States and resumed her previous routine of training exercises with occasional cruises to the Caribbean.

On 29 September 1918, while cruising off Fenwick Island with the destroyer USS Israel, she struck a naval mine that had been laid by the U-boat U-117, which inflicted serious damage but caused no casualties.

Reduced to a speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph), Minnesota made it back to the Philadelphia Navy Yard where repairs were effected.

[3][8] On 11 March 1919, Minnesota returned to service with the Cruiser and Transport Force, making three trips to Brest, France to bring American soldiers back from the battlefields of Europe.